Abramovich and Deripaska will become co-owners of Rosa Khutor

Arkady Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska, through Norilsk Nickel, will become co-owners of Rosa Khutor, the largest ski resort in Russia. Norilsk Nickel will invest more than $250 million in the development of the resort.

Norilsk Nickel will become a co-owner of the largest Russian ski resort Rosa Khutor. This was reported in a press release from Norilsk Nickel.

The decision to support the Rosa Khutor Olympic ski resort was made by the board of directors of Norilsk Nickel at a meeting on April 27.

“The Board of Directors decided to support the Olympic ski resort Rosa Khutor through the participation of MMC in the authorized capital of Belfund Investments Limited, approving the volume of three-year financing totaling $250.5 million,” the statement says.

The Board of Directors decided that in 2016–2017 Norilsk Nickel will acquire shares of Belfund Investments Limited for $250.5 million (the package is not disclosed). According to SPARK-Interfax, Belfund Investments Limited is registered in Cyprus and controls 99.08% of Sport Invest LLC, which is the 100% owner of Rosa Khutor LLC. According to SPARK-Interfax, the revenue of this company in 2014 amounted to 1.96 billion rubles, the net loss was 16.8 billion rubles. (no later data available).

Until now, the only owner of Rosa Khutor was the Interros holding of Vladimir Potanin. The largest shareholders of Norilsk Nickel, in addition to Potanin, are Oleg Deripaska's Rusal and Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov's Crispian Investments.

Rosa Khutor is an asset of the Interros company, owned by Vladimir Potanin. The mountain resort plans to expand - due to the construction of new facilities, the Rosa Khutor ski resort will double in size, and subsequently quadruple.

New tourist facilities will be built on the territory of the Sochi nature reserve. Environmentalists from the non-profit organization Greenpeace are against construction in protected areas. They believe that the creation of tourist industry facilities on the territory of the reserve will lead to the destruction of natural landscapes and disrupt the habitat and migration routes of animals and birds.

Environmentalists appealed to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (SC), but were denied the administrative claim. The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation allowed the construction of new facilities of the Rosa Khutor resort in the Sochi nature reserve .